A summer morning -- finally -- in northern Vermont. Fog burning off, leaving hazy blue sky and lovely, abundant sunshine.
Irises and daises abound. Daylilies are preparing to put on their brief show. Foliage in general has filled every bit of once gray/brown space, the color green everywhere in countless shades.
Robins hunt for bugs in the grass between the house and small barn. Nearby songbirds make music. Honeybees and their various cousins browse among clover blossoms.
Now and then a car passes on the dirt road, otherwise I'm alone.
Inside: ambient playing on the stereo. Cup of espresso, a warm croissant. Small piles of semi-messes scattered around the living space wait to be picked through and massaged into order.
A summer morning, finally, and feeling just fine.
I spend a fair amount of time in an online community, have some close friends there. One of them went through a kind of meltdown two nights ago, acting out via im. in intense, relentless fashion -- a person I've known a while and consider to be like a younger sibling I never had in real life. A sweet soul, not very secure in some ways and hard on themself, characteristics that now and then produce volatile behavior. Not much fun, that behavior, but something I've learned to weather by not hooking into the anger, responding instead with affection, and going away if it gets to be too much. This person went after a mutual friend that evening, destroying a connection with someone who cared. And in all that emotional chaos, the person acting out became a teacher for me in a way my biological parents sometimes were, showing me what I don't want to be, how I don't want to act -- no small gift. And reminding me to appreciate what I have -- home, possessions, loved ones -- and to let people in my life who matter know what they mean to me. It's transitory, this life -- we have nothing but the present moment, with no guarantee of what comes next. Better to talk, not leave statements of love and affection unspoken.
That passage two nights ago sent me offline and out the door seeking peace and relief, into the mild evening where I suddenly found myself doing work that had been waiting -- turning earth, clearing it of weeds, dropping plants in the ground, in particular lily of the valley, several of which had been waiting for a long, unhappy time to make the move from plastic containers into soil.
Not sure what happened that night, but since then I've been in a nicely low-key kind of work mode, ready to do lots of tasks that have accumulated while I made the inner transition from Madrid to this part of the world -- a transition that's been a long, slow slog this time around, my bod still waking up on European time, often leaving me a bit bleary. But time staggers forward and everything gives way before it, even bodies wishing they were several time zones to the east.
The local weather types have been warning today will be genuinely hot, with temperatures sliding up past 90. Right now that sounds just fine to me.
Anyway. Later.
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Vermont backroad beneath hazy, gray skies:
España, te echo de menos.
rws 10:24 AM [+]
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